


men who've never seen light

by orphan_account



Category: Rosencrantz & Guildenstern are Dead - Stoppard
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-12-22
Updated: 2010-12-22
Packaged: 2017-10-14 00:18:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,108
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/143249
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>[holiday fic] In which Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are not dead; and maybe, at least for a little bit, they’re alive.</p>
            </blockquote>





	men who've never seen light

**Author's Note:**

  * For [cj_ludd18](https://archiveofourown.org/gifts?recipient=cj_ludd18).



> -Title is actually totally holiday related, because it came from The Who’s "Christmas." SEE WHAT I DID THERE.  
> -Written for my dear CJ as a ficmas gift- hope this makes up for the lack of (even Yuletide!) fic for these two. Love you much.

Christmas Eve.

A little snowbank, outside a town that is only slightly larger.

Two figures- men- sitting on the bank, throwing shadows onto the otherwise pure snow. One with long, dark hair swept back and tied up with thread. The other with short blonde hair cropped close to his face. (Almost indistinguishable, otherwise.)

Silence. Then: “I say.”

“I say not,” says the other, clipping the conversation short.

Silence. Shuffling as one situates himself in the snow again.

Suddenly: “Rosencrantz.”

The dark-haired man visibly jumps, jolted from his thoughts. “Yes?” he responds.

“What’s my name?” asks the blonde.

Rosencrantz is quiet. “Rosencrantz,” he answers, hesitant.

A groan. “I’m not Rosencrantz. You’re Rosencrantz.”

Rosencrantz looks crestfallen. “I don’t know,” he admits. “I don’t remember. I’m sorry.”

They fall into silence again, the second man pulling his cloak closer around him as a light flurry starts up above them. Rosencrantz looks up, watching it fall.

“It’s cold,” the other man points out. Rosencrantz continues watching the snow.

“Is it?” he asks. “I can’t be all as cold as you _feel_ it is, right? If it were truly as cold as you feel it is, your teeth would be chattering so wildly, you wouldn’t have the opportunity to voice how cold it was. You wouldn’t get sound past your teeth.” He turns to face his companion. “Right?”

He nods, staring off into the frightening whiteout of snow in every direction.

“Guildenstern,” he says, apropos of nothing.

Rosencrantz starts. “Yes?” His face immediately falls. “Damn.”

“Rosencrantz,” Guildenstern says, and he reluctantly turns, as if he’s afraid he’s guessed wrong again.

“What do you know of the Christmas story?” he asks, and Rosencrantz sniffs.

“A bit,” he answers neutrally. “Baby born in a stable, no room at the inn. Right?”

Guildenstern nods, and Rosencrantz sits up a little straighter, proud.

“Right. Now, let’s say, for a minute... Our good lord is, actually, the good Lord.”

Rosencrantz deflates, looking woefully confused. “I don’t understand.”

“Hamlet,” Guildenstern says, patient.

Rosencrantz whips his head back to Guildenstern, a small piling of soft snow fluttering out from his long hair. “Yes?” Then: “No, wait. I’m sorry. Go on.” Guildenstern looks unconvinced, so Rosencrantz adds, “Our lord Hamlet, yes. Go on.”

“Say we put our lord Hamlet in the shoes of the good Lord.”

Rosencrantz seems to consider this. “He’s a bit far away,” he reasons.

Guildenstern sighs, breath visible between them. Rosencrantz blinks at the sudden heat and half-moisture, scrunching his nose and twitching a shiver. “No, I mean. Imagine, for a moment, that our lord Hamlet and his family were cast into the positions of those of the little Lord and his family. For the Christmas story,” he implores, patient (or, maybe, just used to it all.)

“Hamlet as the little baby king, our dear queen the Virgin, etcetera?”

“Yes, that’s the idea.”

Rosencrantz nods enthusiastically. “Yes, I see.” He settles, lips pursed in thought. “That would be awfully strange.”

Guildenstern ignores him. “Were that the case- it isn’t, stop giving me that look. But were it the case, what position do you imagine we would fill?” he asks.

Silence. Rosencrantz looks up into the snow again, squinting as a flake drifts onto his face.

“I’m not sure,” he says. “There were animals, right? Perhaps the sheep? I’ve never had anything against sheep.”

"Think harder," Guildenstern snaps, clearly dissatisfied. Rosencrantz starts guiltily.

"Well, there were... there were sheep, and _oxen_ , and-"

"Get _off_ the animals, for God's sake!"

Guildenstern's conviction is loud and bright despite the evergrowing blanket of snow, and Rosencrantz flinches. He pulls his cloak closer around his shoulders, blinks owlishly at Guildenstern for a quiet moment, before he turns his attention back to the landscape around them. Neither man says anything for a short while that they both lose track of. There is no obvious passage of time; but then, neither of them ever stop to check the time.

("Pointless," Guildenstern had hissed, one day in a blur of days that may have gone on for an entire hour. "It's pointless."

Rosencrantz had looked up at him, curious, childish. "Why?" was all he'd dared, trying to make the single syllable as gentle and approachable as he knew how as not to enrage his companion further.

"Because," Guildenstern replied bitterly. "By the time you figure out what time it is, it's gone and changed."

Rosencrantz hadn't had a response for that.)

After some time has passed (how much is debatable, but it must have _happened_ , after all) Guildenstern breaks the silence, warm breath empowered by the pressure of speech changing the path of falling snow. Rosencrantz stares at the snow, watches it as it flutters closer to his own face, then as it floats softly down to the ground.

"-there were wise men-"

"Do you think the snow minds all this?" he interrupts, still watching the disrupted flakes drift around him.

The blonde cuts himself off from his own tirade, watching Rosencrantz watch the snow. The man is hardly ever still, hardly ever concentrated on any one thing, and Guildenstern finds himself caught up in the deep green of his companion's eyes, like he's never seen them before. He wonders vaguely if he ever has.

"Minds all what?" is what he says, and Rosencrantz gestures broadly, encompassing the two of them and the rest of the world, and his eyes are obstructed by themselves again.

"This," Rosencrantz repeats. He twitches as a tiny flake drips from his eyelash, filming his vision for a split-second before disappearing. "Us. Being so subjected to our will as they are."

"What?"

"Well, for example," he begins, shuffling mutely in the snow, "every time we breathe out, or-" he clamps his mouth shut, searching in sudden panic for any flakes that might be falling by his face. He sighs in relief when he sees none, and Guildenstern blinks as a scrap of snow flits into his vision. "Or speak, whole flurries of the stuff gets all out of place." He deliberately purses his lips and blows a short, gentle burst of air, looks chuffed when the vague white tint to everything spaces out where his breath had hit.

"Yes," Guildenstern barks, impatient. "What of it?"

Rosencrantz opens his mouth to speak, then closes it. He looks up. "Don't you ever feel bad?" he asks. "I mean, for interrupting their lives like that?" He looks back at Guildenstern's impassive stare, suddenly animated. "It must be terrible! Having to change your entire life at the drop of a hat like that- all because some lummox couldn't hold his breath any longer! Surely there's a better way to live than at such mercy to the rest of the world- of _strangers_!"

He calms quickly, fidgets uncomfortably a few times, unconsciously fighting the boundaries of his memory.

("I've just remembered something," he'd explained to his partner, two years or weeks ago.

"What is it?" Guildenstern had asked, clearly excited to be making headway.

"I don't remember," Rosencrantz answered, looking uncomfortable and frightened and small. "All I remember is that I've forgotten it.")

There's a short silence before Rosencrantz seems to recall where he is.

"What were you saying?" he asks politely, slowly reaching up to touch his own hair before dropping his arm quickly to his side again.

"Rosencrantz?" Guildenstern asks. "Are you alright?"

"Fine."

"Really?"

"Why are you so suspicious of me?"

"Why do you look so suspicious?"

"What causes one to look suspicious?"

"Don't you know?"

"Who's to say?"

"Can any of us judge?"

"I don't think so," Rosencrantz answers, slumping over himself gloomily.

"Statement," Guildenstern says softly, with only half of his usual venom.

Rosencrantz frowns, scratches the barely-there stubble on his chin; drops his hand back into his lap and watches it, as if expecting it to do something without his consent. "You were talking about something," he murmurs suddenly, twisting his hands together in his lap. "About men who were wise."

"Men who were wise?" Guildenstern asks, a twitch of irritation on his brow.

"Yes."

"No, you're wrong," Guildenstern snaps, pitching forward, closer, with his temper. "I was talking about the wise men."

Rosencrantz doesn't flinch. " 'S the same thing," he mumbles moodily. He doesn't look up from watching his gloved hands, where he's wringing bruises into them with the tough leather.

Guildenstern watches his hands too, then, watches his violent movements, the tumult of skin and leather that his companion is watching as if he isn't the one behind it. They both fall into tense silence, watching his hands- Guildenstern flinching in the tension with every movement.

It's another blip of movement, of time, Rosencrantz cheerfully playing with his own hands; before Guildenstern clenches his teeth and whips his own arm out from beneath his cloak, clamping his hand over the dark-haired man's wrists.

Rosencrantz looks up at last, gapes.

"Stop that," is all Guildenstern offers, feeling the muscles in his bare hand go taut and weak from the cold. He doesn't let go of his companion's wrists, but Rosencrantz doesn't seem to mind. (He seems to have forgotten they ever belonged to him at all.)

"Wise men," Rosencrantz prompts quietly.

Guildenstern brightens.

"Of course," he says, shuffling closer. He lets go of the other man's hands and sits up a little straighter. "The Christmas story," Guildenstern begins again. "There were wise men, men who came to Bethlehem and brought the little baby Lord wonderful gifts."

Rosencrantz blinks. "I see," he responds, and Guildenstern immediately knows that he doesn't.

"They were led all the way to that tiny town by watching the stars," he continues. Rosencrantz looks up, squints. Says nothing. "One star, in particular- or, so the story goes."

"You think we're most like the wise men, then?" Rosencrantz asks, still looking up, squinting into the snow-tinted sky.

"I do."

Silence. Rosencrantz sniffs. "You always tell me that I'm not very wise at all," he says diplomatically.

" _Not what I meant_."

"It isn't?"

"Wouldn't that be impossible?"

"Wouldn't what be?"

"Wouldn't I know my own intentions?"

"Does anyone?"

"Doesn't everyone?"

"Do you?"

"I'd certainly know them better than _you_."

"Statement," Rosencrantz imparts cheerfully, a simple, unclouded smile on his features. "One-all."

Guildenstern sighs bitterly, disrupting the atmosphere in a tiny billow of warmth and color where the flurries fall out of place.

"But," Rosencrantz starts, slipping back into a neutral frown, "were we the wise men... Would we not see a star?" he asks.

Guildenstern deflates. "Yes," he admits.

They fall into silence. 

Rosencrantz picks at the loose threads of his cloak, the lining of his gloves, the worn skin of his boots. His fingernails. His chapped lip.

He stands. Guildenstern imagines he's run out of things to pick.

The assumption only makes Rosencrantz's outburst more perverse.

"Come _on_ , then!" He shouts- he's _shouting-_ "We're right here! Send us a star, _tell us where to go!_ "

He waits a beat, swallows.

" _We're waiting! We're ready_ _!_ "

Silence, as his echoes are swallowed by the hungry snow all around them, the words hanging heavily in the immediate air.

Rosencrantz frowns, clenches his fists before they fall relaxed inaccordant to his will.

"Rosencrantz?" Guildenstern asks quietly, as he sits down. Rosencrantz doesn't look over at him.

"Guildenstern?" he tries again, and Rosencrantz turns to him.

"I'm sorry, Rosen- no, not... I'm sorry. Guilden- Alfred. _Guildenstern_." He sucks in a harsh breath. "I'm sorry."

"Why did you do that?" Guildenstern asks him.

Rosencrantz shifts in the snow. "I thought that was what you wanted," he says.

Guildenstern doesn't know what to say to that.

They sit still, snow collecting in all the dips of their character, until Rosencrantz suddenly reaches out and takes Guildenstern's bare hands.

Guildenstern starts. "What are you doing?" he snaps, jerking his hands away.

Rosencrantz doesn't let go of them. "You said you were cold," he states.

"That was _ages_ ago," Guildenstern returns sulkily, but he doesn't pull away.

Abruptly, the small town in their periphery explodes in soft, warm light and moving bodies, caring- care _free_  eruptions of easy happiness radiating with the golden light from under the smooth blanket of white snow.

Rosencrantz turns his head to watch it, hears the singing and sees the light, and he smiles.

"What do you think's happened?" he asks.

Guildenstern, with hands still tucked into the leather of Rosencrantz's gloves, deliberates. 

"Perhaps a baby's been born," he says curiously, before even making the decision that it had been what he'd wanted to say.

Rosencrantz smiles at him, and he's convinced.

"Then perhaps we've done what we were meant to do all along," he replies with the slightest hesitation.

Guildenstern looks up at the sky, and watches the stars.


End file.
